DETROIT, Nov. 19, 2013 — Marygrove College today announced the addition of their BOLD microsite as an information resource for the College’s urban leadership initiative. BOLD, which stands for Building Our Leadership in Detroit, is a three-year, W.K. Kellogg Foundation-funded effort for Marygrove College to develop an urban leadership curriculum, and a cornerstone in the building of the College’s strategic vision of fostering urban leadership.

The urban leadership vision, which was inspired and championed by current Marygrove President Dr. David J. Fike, focuses the College on strengthening its understanding and expertise on contemporary urban issues, as well as its understanding and capacity to develop leaders. It commits the College to invest in faculty development to enhance the intellectual capital of the institution, and to support mechanisms (curricular and co-curricular) that utilize intellectual capital to develop its students to be leaders in urban areas. A key component of the BOLD initiative is the establishment of the Office of Urban Leadership (OUL). The OUL helps ensure facilitation, planning, and implementation of an integrated portfolio to advance urban leadership both internal and external to the campus.

The Office of Urban Leadership is encouraging involvement in urban leadership initiatives and believes that the microsite will serve as a place where people can go to become informed about the urban leadership vision, find opportunities to engage, and be inspired to share their own stories of how they are helping to make a difference in our community.

Year-long series of events continues at Marygrove College on October10, 2013

DETROIT, Oct. 7, 2013— The Dudley Randall Robert Hayden/Dudley Randall Centennial Project will commemorate, through a variety of programs and activities at different Detroit area sites, two renowned poets who grew up and began writing poetry in the Detroit communities known as Black Bottom and Paradise Valley. The purpose of these events is to examine the two poets’ contributions to American culture, to expose their work to new audiences, to provide opportunities for creative and scholarly expressions that intersect with their poetic legacies, and to acknowledge the historical occasion.

As part of Marygrove College’s Defining Detroit series, Marygrove professor Frank Rashid and Wayne State University professor Melba Joyce Boyd and will give a joint presentation on Robert Hayden and Dudley Randall. Film clips and bio-critical discussion of the Detroit writers will trace the relationship between their lives and their writings. This event will take place on Oct. 10 at 7:30 p.m. in the Marygrove College Theatre, 8425 West McNichols, Detroit, and is free and open to the public. Call (313) 927-1383 for information.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

Robert Hayden was born on August 4, 1913 in Detroit, Michigan, and Dudley Randall was born on January 14, 1914 in Washington DC, but moved to Detroit with his family on January 1, 1920. Hayden and Randall were first introduced to each other because they were poets. This introduction in 1937 occurred during the Great Depression and when both were engaged in the labor movement in Detroit. This relationship evolved into a life-long friendship. Though they pursued higher education at different times in their lives, they both majored in English at Wayne State University, and they both secured graduate degrees at the University of Michigan—Ann Arbor: Hayden in creative writing and Randall in library science. Ultimately, both poets achieved international recognition and critical acclaim as poets; and as editors and educators, they made major contributions to the African American literary canon.

DETROIT, July 16, 2013—Marygrove College today announced that its Master of Arts and Graduate Certificate in Human Resource Management program has been officially recognized for its alignment with the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) requirements for HR degree programs.

“There is no shortage of programs offering HR-related degrees,” explains Jerry van Rossum, Assistant Professor and Coordinator for the program. “The problem is that there is little consistency amongst them—and the lack of industry and program standards is costly not only to graduates, but also the businesses that are looking to hire them.”

Dr. John E. ShayJust one week into what would become his nearly two-decade tenure as President of Marygrove College, Dr. John E. Shay, or “Jack,” as most of us call him, was asked what had originally attracted him to a small, liberal arts college in the Midwest. His answer perhaps mirrors the reasons many of us have found ourselves at Marygrove.

Marygrove was small. Intimate. It took care to cultivate relationships with its students. These things, he said in a 1980 interview, were precisely what made the college “an increasing asset.” These were the things that separated us from the “bureaucratization” found at so many other institutions.

While larger, state-funded institutions may have seen Marygrove as what Dr. Shay called, “a very small frog in a very large pond,” he knew that our independence was what enabled us to “make judgments based on educational goals not politics and state budgets.” Other distinguishing features were Marygrove’s commitment to the liberal arts, and perhaps most importantly, our refusal to compromise our Catholic roots. These things, Dr. Shay believed, were what would ensure the success of Marygrove College.

DETROIT, April 12, 2013 — To commemorate its twenty-fifth year of bringing nationally-known authors to its campus for a public lecture and seminar, Marygrove's English and Modern Languages Department is pleased to announce that award-winning poet Terrance Hayes, will be the featured guest at its Contemporary American Authors Lecture Series (CAALS) event to be held on Friday, April 19, 2013 on the Marygrove College campus. Mr. Hayes will also host a master class for Detroit area high school students and teachers beginning at 10:30 a.m. in the Marygrove College Theatre.

Marygrove College would like to congratulate and recognize all undergraduate students who have demonstrated academic excellence and outstanding leadership in 2013. For a complete listing of awards and recipients, browse the full 2013 Honors Convocation program below.

Marygrove College is the proud recipient of a new scholarship for students who demonstrate exceptional dedication to advancing our community and enhancing our surrounding neighborhood through leadership—the kind of leadership that is founded in the mission of the institution. The Quigley- Doherty Family Endowed Scholarship will be presented at the Honors Convocation on March 24 in honor of Mary Catherine and David J. Doherty by their five children. Throughout their 48-year marriage, the couple dedicated their lives to service to others, and shared their faith and belief in community with all who knew them.

After almost a decade of caring for their parents, Kathleen Doherty and her four brothers, Mike, Jim, John and Joe, spent a great deal of time cleaning out the family home to prepare it for sale. Kathleen couldn’t help but reminisce about the exceptional upbringing she and her four brothers were fortunate to receive.

Evidence of that fact was found throughout the home, in virtually every room: old photographs, letters, and mementos brought back memories and thoughts of childhood games, birthday parties, graduations and family weddings that will be filed away in her mind forever. One of the most curious things she discovered, over and over again, were keys—many, many keys in all shapes and sizes—neatly tucked in the backs of drawers and in cupboards.

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Marygrove College Students to Receive Michigan Campus Compact Award for Dedication to Community Service

LANSING, MI – Michigan Campus Compact (MiCC) is pleased to announce that two students from Marygrove College will be awarded for their dedication and commitment to community service during the 17th annual Outstanding Student Service Awards Celebration, April 13, 2013, at the Kellogg Hotel and Conference Center in East Lansing, Mich.

Each year, MiCC awards students from member colleges and universities across the state for their outstanding commitment to service-learning and civic engagement. Three types of awards are given: the Outstanding Community Impact Award, the Commitment to Service Award and the Heart and Soul Award. This year, more than 450 students from 33 member campuses will receive awards.

Angel Count and Melody Farr will receive the Heart and Soul Award. This award is given to students to recognize their time, effort and personal commitment to their communities through service.

MiCC will honor all award recipients at an awards brunch on April 13, 2013, at the Kellogg Hotel and Conference Center in East Lansing from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

Michigan Campus Compact is a coalition of college and university presidents who are committed to fulfilling the public purpose of higher education. MiCC promotes the education and commitment of Michigan college students to be civically engaged citizens, through creating and expanding academic, co-curricular and campus-wide opportunities for community service, service-learning and civic engagement. For more information, please visit www.micampuscompact.org.

DETROIT, March 6, 2013 — The Department of English and Modern Languages at Marygrove College has just completed the judging for the third year of the Mary Helen Washington Writing Award Contest, offered in conjunction with its Contemporary American Authors Lecture Series (CAALS). Named after nationally-renowned scholar, editor, essayist, and teacher Dr. Mary Helen Washington, and supported through the generosity of series sponsors Lillian and Don Bauder, this annual contest asks students to write essays in response to the works of the CAALS guest artist. This year’s students were asked to write essays or poems in response to the works of this year's guest artist, National Book Award-winning poet Terrance Hayes.

Registration is going on now for fourteen new classes offering graduate credit

DETROIT, Jan. 24, 2013 – Marygrove College today announced the addition of an exciting new complement of continuing education graduate recertification courses for teachers in cooperation with Learner’s Edge, Inc. (LEI). The expanded course selection offers dynamic topics that are timely and relevant for educators, such as autism, bullying and addressing multiple intelligences.

The partnership promises to provide interesting, affordable, applicable and rigorous courses for classroom teachers, school administrators, school counselors, speech therapists, school nurses and other education professionals. These courses are designed to expand the knowledge base of professionals, enhance classroom instruction and ultimately increase student achievement, which is a foundational goal shared by both Marygrove and LEI.

Campus memorial service will be held in the Sacred Heart Chapel in Marygrove’s Liberal Arts Building on Tuesday, March 19, 2013, at 4:30 pm.

Dr. Chae-Pyong (J.P.) Song1960 - 2013Last March, Dr. Chae-Pyong (J.P.) Song began his presentation at the Marygrove Academic Symposium with these words: “One way or the other we all cross borders; border-crossings entail arrivals and departures. But we all cross borders differently, so, we don’t experience arrivals and departures in the same way.”

Even in the last moments before he crossed his final border, J.P. taught us how to resist both physical and philosophical lines of demarcation; how to defy our own borders—just as he had throughout his life.

Today we are all grappling with his crossing in different ways, but those of us fortunate enough to have known him as a mentor, colleague and friend no doubt arrive at a similar destination: J.P. was a rare intellectual who found, and taught others to find, beauty and possibility in a world wrought with uncertainty.

After leaving Hwayang-myon, Yeosu, Korea in 1989, Dr. Song earned his Ph.D. from Texas A&M University, concentrating on postcolonial Anglophone literature. He was coordinator of Marygrove’s Master of Arts in English program from 2007 through 2011 and has been a part of the department of English since 2001.

If we, no matter where we come from, could imagine others, and if we could place ourselves into the place of others, in other words, if we could exercise our empathetic imagination more willingly, the world could be a better place.

Dr. Chae-Pyong Song

In addition to being a master teacher of 20th century English literature, postcolonial literature, globalization and literary theory, J.P. has translated over 200 literary works by Korean poets, many of which appear on his website, Korean Poetry in Translation. His work has also been published in The Korea Times, New Writing from Korea, Metamorphoses: Journal of Literary Translation, WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly, and Azalea: Journal of Korean Literature and Culture. Recently he, along with his friend and collaborator Dr. Anne Rashid, won the 40th Korean Literature Translation Awards for translating Kim Hye-soon's poems.